A/HAT HAPPENS
iFTEH DEATH ?
\ SYMPOSIUM
BY
LEADING WRITERS
AND THINKERS
GHarles Josselyn
A Symposium by Leading Writers and Thinkers
" What happens after death ? " is the most per-
sonal question there is, and this symposium from
some of the most thoughtful and influential men of
the day should add light to what is, perhaps, the
greatest problem of all ages and the most vital.
Opinions vary greatly, as the following titles show.
PARTIAL LIST OF CONTENTS
Do we Cease to Live at Death? - Rev. R. F. Morton, M.A., D.D.
We do not Die - - - Rev. J. E. Roberts, M.A., B.D.
After Death — Nothingness .... fjr. Max Nordau
Three Arguments for an After-life - Prof. A. H. Sayce, LL.D., D.D.
Our Chance of Immortality - The Late Monsignor R. H. Benson
The Undying Soul • - - Rev. A. C. Dixon, B.A.,D.D.
The Misbeliefs of Religion Sir Hiram S. Maxim, C.E., M.E.
Is there an Intermediate State - - Rev. Benjamin Bell, B.D.
The Theosophic View Mrs. Annie Besant
Shall we Live Again ? Rev. A . J. Waldron
The Familiar Unknown • • - - A. P. Sinnett
After Death — Something .... Rev. Stanley Rogers
Can Converse be held with the Spirits of Friends? George E. Winter
Science and Immortality - - Canon S. A. Alexander, M.A.
The Biblical View .... Rev. Dinsdale T. Young
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?
WHAT HAPPENS
AFTER DEATH?
A SYMPOSIUM By
LEADING WRITERS
AND THINKERS
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK and LONDON
1916
r-
CONTENTS
PACK
FOREWORD ix
1. Is THIS LIFE ALL ? i
Canon J. W. Horsley, M.A.
2. Do WE CEASE TO LIVE AT DEATH ? .10
Rev. R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D.
3. SHALL WE LIVE AGAIN ? ... 15
Rev. A. J. Waldron
4. WE DO NOT DIE . . . . . 20
Rev. J. E. Roberts, M.A., B.D.
5. AFTER DEATH — NOTHINGNESS ! . 26
Dr. Max Nordau
6. AFTER DEATH — WHAT ? . . . .30
T. Claye Shaw, M.D., F.R.C.P.
7. OUR CHANCE OF IMMORTALITY . . 34
The late Monsignor R. H. Benson
8. THE APPEAL TO THE FUTURE . . -37
Rev. Frank Ballard, D.D., M.A., B.Sc.
9. THREE ARGUMENTS FOR AN AFTER-LIFE . 42
Prof. A. H. Sayce, D.Litt., LL.D., D.D.
615S32
Contents
PAGE
10. AFTER DEATH — SOMETHING ! . . -44
R#v. Stanley Rogers
11. THE FAMILIAR UNKNOWN . . -49
A. P. SinneU
12. MY BELIEF 52
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
13. THE UNDYING SOUL . . . .53
Rev. A. C. Dixon, B.A., D.D.
14. THE MISBELIEFS OF RELIGION . . .61
Sir Hiram S. Maxim, C.E., M.E.
15. DEATH is NOT THE END ! . .66
Sir Robert Anderson, K.C.B., B.A., LL.D.
16. No ONE COMES BACK TO TELL . . 70
John Bloundelle- Burton
17. THE BIBLICAL VIEW . . . -73
Rev. Dinsdale T. Young
1 8. THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY . . . 78
/. Arthur Hill
19. THE THEOSOPHIC VIEW . . . .86
Mrs. Annie Besant
20. SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY . . -93
Canon S. A. Alexander, M.A.
21. CAN CONVERSE BE HELD WITH THE
SPIRITS OF FRIENDS ? . . . -95
George E. Winter
vi
Contents
PAGE
22. WE CANNOT COME TO AN END . . 102
A. C. Benson, C.V.O., M.A.
23. IS THERE AN INTERMEDIATE STATE ? . 103
Rev. Benjamin Bell, B.D.
24. THE TRIUMPH OF SELF .... 107
Flora Annie Steel
25. WHAT is IT THAT SURVIVES ? . . . 109
Lady Grove
26. THE SIMPLEST FAITHS ARE BEST . .no
Lee Danvers
vn
FOREWORD
"WHAT happens after death?" is, of course,
the most painfully personal question there is.
A great many matters of controversy may
interest us without vitally concerning us in-
dividually, but, after all, every one of us has,
at some time or other, to face death, and it is
inevitable that the question of the hereafter
should have a fascination at once peculiar and
painful.
To-day millions of brave men on the long-
drawn-out battle fronts are face to face with the
prospect of sudden death, and both to them and
to those near and dear to them, the old, old
problem of the future life has suddenly become
urgent and acute.
This little book does not pretend to give a
dogmatic and exhaustive reply to the question
"After Death— What?" Fifty years ago the
reply, both of orthodox upholders of faith, and
those who did not believe in the survival after
death, would have been much more precise, and
ix
Foreword
much more emphatic. To-day there is far less
tendency among the champions of faith to be
dogmatically certain, and, on the other hand,
there is far greater tendency among scientists
to regard the question as one worthy of their
scientific treatment.
The opinions gathered together in this little
book arose out of a newspaper discussion con-
ducted recently, a discussion which aroused such
extraordinary interest that it was felt the articles
ought to be brought together and supplemented
in this more permanent form.
Naturally, being a symposium of men of
widely different schools of thought, there is
often considerable diversity in the views ex-
pressed, but it is felt that this very freedom of
discussion and variety of expression will be a
help rather than a hindrance to all those who
want to form their own opinion on a subject
necessarily vague, but always vital.
What Happens After Death?
account for all these shadows, and that from
their united lispings or sighs, inarticulate as
they were and inconclusive in detail, heard pos-
sibly only by the expectant ear, there yet came
with some distinctness a resultant voice that
never muttered of death and nothingness, but
always heartened man with a song that spoke of
life and love and light; life indomitable, love
progressive, in light ineffable for ever and for
aye.
DO WE GEASE TO LIVE AT DEATH?
By the Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D.
" Do we cease to live at death ? " Naturally if
we cease to live when we die, there can be no
effective argument or evidence to show that we
should live again in this world or in any other.
The personality would have ceased to be, and
when it has once ceased to be, a resuscitation
would be simply a new creation, and that new
creation would not be the person that had lived
before.
It is this that makes the argument for rein-
carnation so unsatisfying when you come to
reflect upon it. The reincarnated life has no
conscious or moral connection with its former
experience, and consequently the supposed
judgment in the renewed life has no shadow of
justice; the reward is not deserved if the rein-
carnation is a favourable one, nor is the punish-
ment deserved if the reverse.
The question, therefore, that confronts
humanity, and has confronted it since the
earliest records of human life upon this planet,
is whether the death of the body involves the
dissolution of personality.
10
What Happens After Death?
Now putting aside for a moment the power-
ful argument which is derived from the Chris-
tian fact of the resurrection and looking simply
at the argument of natural religion, we can
certainly marshal an immense weight of evi-
dence to show that the soul is not involved in
the destruction of the body.
Take, for example, the Phaedon of Plato —
that immortal description of Socrates arguing
for his immortality as the hemlock poison
worked and death crept up from his feet to his
heart. It is true that the formal arguments
advanced in that great piece of literature may
not carry conviction, but behind those argu-
ments which were relative only to that time and
that world of thought in which Socrates lived,
there is the indubitable fact that Socrates died
in that way, and faced death with the cheerful
confidence that he himself would escape from
the perishing body and that his persecutors and
judges would not be able to capture the soul in
its flight.
Consequently his last command to his friends
was to offer a cock to ^Esculapius, the god of
healing, because he felt that when the body
should lie still and cold in death he himself
would be whole and more utterly alive than he
had been when he inhabited the body.
It may, however, be said that the conviction
of Socrates carries no more weight than the con-
ii
What Happens After Death?
viction of the modern man of science, who care-
fully assures us that he has no expectation of a
future life and no desire for it.
But let us look at that argument for
a moment. Is the personal conviction of a mind
and character like Socrates of no more intrinsic
value than the personal conviction of a man who
expects to cease to be directly a cup of poison
or some other accident arrests the functions of
his body ? Instinctively you reply that the per-
sonality of Socrates Is incalculably greater and
more significant than the personality of this poor
materialist whose life is a mere breath, a shadow,
that passes immediately away.
And why is the personality of Socrates im-
pressing the world to-day, after more than 2,000
years ?
The answer simply is, because of his im-
movable conviction about his surviving death — a
conviction which gives to his life and to all that
he said and did a depth and a meaning which
never has ceased to affect mankind.
On the other hand, the man who from any
cause has surrendered the belief in a life to come
dwindles and withers so that his personality
becomes intrinsically insignificant, useless to the
world as it is, and, of course, useless to himself.
But now what does this mean? If we turn
from the individual to the whole body of human
beings that are living to-day upon the globe the
12
What Happens After Death?
same argument immediately applies. The
human race derives its significance, its value,
entirely from its beliefs in a life that goes beyond
any conscious earthly life.
Just so far as the race surrenders the faith
in immortality which has been its appanage from
the beginning, it dwindles and withers — it feels
that it can give no account of itself. The pos-
sibilities of some terrestrial paradise or some
indefinite improvement of the material condi-
tions of life offer no sufficient reason for the
deeper instincts and supports of the race.
If it attempts to picture to itself the ultimate
condition of human society when all the present
evils are removed and universal health and well-
being are secured, it is immediately paralysed
by the thought, "But what does that matter?
And what has been achieved if all of the in-
dividuals which compose the race are simply
passing away into nothingness like the autumnal
leaves when the winter approaches ? "
The argument, therefore, is much stronger
than it appears at the outset, because it involves
not only the individual life but the life of the
race. The one intolerable thing for the race is
that life should lose its significance and should
sink back into the mere animal functions of
nutrition and procreation, and significance can-
not be given to life upon this planet so far as
that life develops into that greatest of earthly
13
What Happens After Death?
phenomena, personality, unless to personality
can be attributed the quality of continuance.
It may, of course, be said that this quality
can be secured and this significance can be
given to the life of the race if the selected in-
dividuals, the "supermen" as they would be
called to-day, may secure continuance while the
large mass of undistinguished and futile lives
pass away into nothingness, and from a purely
philosophical point of view that argument may
be valid. But against it rises up all the sense
of pity and consideration for even the lowest of
human beings which we have learned from
Christianity.
It is Christ's unique service to mankind that
He taught us to see the greatness and absolute
worth of even the most insignificant human soul.
And in that way, by another line of argument,
the certainty that some human beings must
survive death is changed into a whole confidence
that all human beings who are in any true sense
personalities, continue and move on to reap the
fruits of their life on earth in a life under new
and perhaps more hopeful conditions.
Even the most sceptical and disappointed
human heart that is touched by pity and love
will write as its own epitaph, " A little trust that
when we die we reap our sowing, and so good-
bye ! "
r *f dL
SHALL WE LIVE AGAIN?
By the Rev. A. J. WALDRON
THIS is the eternal question, as old as death.
It is, and ever will be, the problem of religion,
science, and philosophy. The borderland be-
tween "the living" and "the not living" is the
Waterloo of science.
The great question is : What proof have we
of life beyond the grave? I dare assert that
the proof is so clear as almost to amount to
mathematical certainty.
Take, for instance, the enormous amount of
evidence furnished by the phenomena of
psychical research ; read what Sir Oliver Lodge
has written in "The Destiny of Man"; weigh
over the names of men like Dr. Barrett, F. W.
Myers, Prof. Sidgwick, Dr. Hodgson, Camille
Flammarion, A. J. Balfour, and a host of others.
I am quite aware that the history of spiritualism
contains innumerable stories of fraud, illusion,
delusion, etc., but when you have finished your
criticism you are still left with a residuum of
fact, which baffles solution except you admit
that there is striking evidence of communication
between what we call "the living and the dead."
'5
What Happens After Death?
I have studied spiritualism for twenty years;
I do not think there is a book worth reading
on the subject which I have not carefully
studied. I have debated with some of the most
eminent mediums, and I have studied the ques-
tion in seance, and I have been forced to the
conclusion that there is a residuum of fact which
can only be explained on the spiritualistic
hypothesis.
But when the person is dead and you bury
the body, what becomes of the life, the human
ego, this atom of force, that used the body, that
played its divine harmony in the brain cells?
If it goes into space or a spiritual sphere,
how can it act without a medium, for we know
that on this plane the phenomenon of human
life depends on a physical organism ? Not so
fast, please. The old chemistry, it is true, said
the line of communication between the tips of
the finger and the brain was a chain of atoms,
atom conveying impression to atom and on and
on to the brain, and there read off by that
mysterious thing called consciousness. That
chemistry is out of date. We know now by
established fact the medium of communication
is not gross matter, but ether. We send
messages without wires — wireless telegraphy-
it passes through oceans, mountains; nothing
can stop it.
What is the medium? Ether. What is
16
What Happens After Death?
ether ? It is not matter ; it fills stellar space, it
fills molecular space, it is not subject to gravita-
tion. It is a third something, neither matter
nor force.
Don't you remember that an old sage called
Paul wrote, "You will be buried with a cor-
ruptible body, and you will rise with an in-
corruptible body. There is a natural body and
a spiritual body " ? It seems to me that Paul
anticipated modern science in that inspired
passage. At least, ether shows us we have two
bodies ; one, the gross material fit for this planet,
and another which no closed doors or windows
can shut in. You have got the spiritual body
now, and that body which, at last, science has
put its finger on, is to my mind the spiritual
body which will be used by the ego in that
spiritual world for personal manifestation.
The verdict of history ? Look where you
will see the phenomena of religion, religion
that spells three things — God, the soul, and im-
mortality. The doctrine of immortality is at
the back of all Egyptian history; it built the
Pyramids, decorated the tombs, wrote the
"Book of the Dead," founded Thebes, and gave
the first poets their songs, and runs its golden
weft through all its literature.
It is the same everywhere; unlock the mys-
terious cuneiform reading on the clay tablets
of Assyria, Babylon, and Chaldea, and there is
'7
What Happens After Death?
practically only one message — life beyond the
grave.
Is there anything to match this? Tell me
this instinct for immortality is a nightmare, an
excrescence bred of ignorance. I reply that
here is a greater miracle than the one you dis-
place. The law of correspondence is broken.
No; when I find a fossil, and on it I find fossil
fins, I rightly infer that the fossil was once a
fish, and there must have been water to match
it, correspond with it. The eye, with its coats,
humours, lens, and retina, is impossible without
light to match it; the bird, with its wings beau-
tifully formed, must have air with buoyancy to
match it. So when I find this instinct for im-
mortality as universal as language, as old as
human thought, as real as consciousness, as
deep as human needs, and as high as human
aspiration, I reply it seems to me it must have
life beyond to match it, to equalise it, to make
the music plain, and fill the earth with law, and
the universe with justice.
We believe in justice ; we believe in hope ;
but if there is no future life, there can be no
justice in the universe. The girl dies outraged
in the gutter, the betrayer goes free, the scales
are never adjusted.
I believe in God, because I believe in jus-
tice, in love, and in hope. I believe there is
something in the universe which must match
18
What Happens After Death?
alien, vapid, the immortality of which can have
no more meaning and interest for our conscious
Ego than the indestructibility of the atoms com-
posing our mortal body. What value, what
interest can an immortality have for me in which
I should no longer love what I have loved, no
longer hate what I have hated, no longer remem-
ber my past life, my small and great adventures,
my moments of joy and my days of sorrow, my
sweet and my bitter emotions, my ambitions,
my yearnings, my disappointments, my pains,
and my consolations — in one word, all that com-
posed that personality the preservation of which
seemed so hugely important to me ? In this case
it is not me that survives, the immortality of this
alien soul is not my immortality and does not
concern me in any way.
But the first alternative is still far worse.
Suppose my immortal soul would really be my
conscious Ego, all the essentials of my per-
sonality surviving the death of my body. It
would remain connected with everything that
was dear to me, it would preserve all my feel-
ings. Now, think of this : Reduced to the state
of a soul without organs, without means for
exercising the slightest action on the material
world, I would see my child weep and would be
unable to comfort it; I would accompany her
life, watch it in every moment, witness her dis-
tress, her pains, her dangers, her despair, and I
27
What Happens After Death?
would be incapable of aiding her, helping her,
protecting her, defending her, encouraging her.
Why, this would be a fiendish torture, worse
than all the torments attributed to hell ! Why,
annihilation would be an inestimable blessing
compared with this existence of a feeling but
paralytic soul, impotent witness of all sufferings,
a prisoner, fettered and gagged, shut in in its
eternity and deprived of all possibility to com-
municate with all that it loves more than itself.
Let us go one step farther.
My Ego is composed of certain definite
notions or conceptions. The contents of its con-
sciousness are the world which it knows, are the
beings which have always surrounded it. Now
eternity means a rather long time. All that I
know, all that I love, all that concerns or
interests me in any way, will have disappeared,
say, in a couple of centuries. In two thousand
years, perhaps, not even my nation will exist
any longer. What interest, this globe of ours,
shall it then offer to me? What will be the
contents of that immortality which is so fervently
wished for ? The soul will have to fill itself with
other, new interests which I cannot guess. But
in this case again the soul will not be my soul,
mine Ego.
No. The immortality of the personality is
neither conceivable nor desirable. Nothingness
is more consoling. And all one ought to desire
28
What Happens After Death?
is a death which does not come prematurely, but
at the precise hour when one has accomplished
all one's tasks and completed the circle of the
vital obligations. Such a death — this is my
innermost conviction — can have no terror for
anybody.
AFTER DEATH-WHAT?
By T. CLAYE SHAW, M.D., F.R.C.P.
IT is pure speculation to indulge in ideas and
statements on this subject. Neither the Arch-
bishops nor the Pope can tell us anything more
than we know ourselves, and that is that we
know nothing. We do not even know what life
is, and all that we can prove is that under cer-
tain circumstances the body can perform acts
and is capable of showing what we call mental
phenomena, and that under others it is incap-
able of these demonstrations and falls into a
desolation, a decomposition, which we call
death, and this we say is a sign of having lost
something which we call life, which was be-
fore associated with it. Except through the
body, we cannot increase, diminish, or control
life, because it is only a hypothesis that there is
such a thing, or that it can have a separate
existence.
What we do is to follow authority, to believe
that there is a future existence for what is called
the "spiritual life," because we are told to do so
by certain people who have recorded their ex-
perience of being the witnesses of certain
30
What Happens After Death?
marvellous and miraculous events which hap-
pened many years ago.
I cannot think that the events connected with
the death and resurrection of Christ, as recorded,
are mere imaginings or delusions or lies by
ingenious persons, and I find no more difficulty
in believing them than I have in understanding
how it is that radium splits up into helion and
niton, or that two gases like oxygen and hydro-
gen can be made to form water. I have else-
where shown that theories of ghosts are merely
the result of subjective conditions during life,
and do not in any way represent life or spirit
apart from the body ; but I am not going to deny
that there is a connection between the death of
the body and the further existence in some form
of that which constituted the living body,
simply because, whilst, to some degree, I under-
stand the body, I have yet not the least concep-
tion of the nature of the other.
The nature of a future life may be altogether
different from what we can imagine ; in fact, we
have no clue of any sort as to its real form, and
the material realisations of pure happiness which
are held out by the exponents of various creeds
are simply devices for tempting into their ranks
all those whose idea of reward for self-denial
and privation on earth is pleasure in a future
state, whilst the penalty for transgressing cer-
tain other lines of conduct is eternal torture in
What Happens After Death?
another world, there being all the time no proof
of there being another world.
All who believe in the Bible must believe
in the existence of another state after bodily
death. The fact is there affirmed, though there
is no declaration of its nature, and those who
refuse to be guided by the Bible and who de-
clare their view of "after death — nothingness,"
must be left to their own guidance and the
temporal laws of the country.
A reasonable follower of the Bible is not
likely to go wrong. He has a code of high
morality laid down for him ; but there is no
reason for saying that an atheist or an agnostic
is unable or unfit to be a good member of
society. It is quite conceivable that a man who
has ho religion may be a most excellent citizen,
and even a distinguished man in his avocation,
because he is capable of seeing that pains and
penalties await any infraction of the social code,
but as to what is to happen to him hereafter, he
must be left to his own isolation ; for just as he
cannot prove that there is no future state, so
are we unable to prove either that there is a
future state or the nature of it.
The holding of the idea of a future state is
a comfort to many. It gives the support of
working in a certain way for a future reward. It
may be a poor purpose, this working for reward
and against punishment, but it appeals to many,
32
What Happens After Death?
and is doubtless a great determining factor in
critical circumstances. Why, then, interfere
with it ? There is as much " intellect " in believ-
ing in a future state as there is in denying one ;
but as to the kind of thing a future state is, no
conception is more than guesswork.
Would it be uncharitable to hope that those
who desire nothingness will get it, and that
those who regulate their conduct during life in
accordance with the view that they are to fit
themselves for a future existence may reap the
fruit of their belief in a way they deserve?
Whether there be a future existence or not, he
may be a happy man who lives up to a good
ideal, who is careful of himself and does his
best to help his neighbours.
This is rather a paltry, empty creed, but it
is all that the self-sufficient person can claim.
The strong man, rejoicing in his strength, may
be content with things as they are, but he is a
stronger man who calculates upon a future
existence, because, connecting his future state
with his present bodily conduct, he is more likely
to be careful of the latter in order to ensure a
greater perfection in the former, whatever the
nature of it may be.
33
OUR CHANGE OF IMMORTALITY
By the late Monsignor ROBERT HUGH BENSON
ON purely natural grounds — apart, that is to
say, from the revelation that God has made to
man on the subject — perhaps the strongest argu-
ment for the immortality of the individual soul
is the ineradicable instinct of moral respon-
sibility.
It is surely utterly impossible to explain
away this deep conviction, felt by every
normal person, that each man is himself re-
sponsible for his past, and will have to face the
results of his past actions, by the theory that it
is no more than a kind of inherited social
instinct. How, therefore, unless personal
identity be preserved, can this conviction be
justified ?
A second reason, again drawn from experi-
ence quite apart from revelation, for believing in
personal immortality may be found in the argu-
ment from love.
Human love is, by common consent, the
most sublime of human emotions; the relation-
ships we form in this life are not only sacred,
but fundamental; and it is their deepest
34
What Happens After Death?
characteristic that they demand continuance.
The love of friends, the love between parents
and children — these things cannot be explained
away, as materialist philosophers sometimes pre-
tend to explain away the love between husband
and wife, as merely physical in their origin and
end. Yet, if personal immortality be a dream
only, these profound emotions and relationships
are completely deceptive. For in their very
essence they demand permanence and eternal
renewal.
A third natural argument for personal im-
mortality is slowly emerging from the researches
of psychologists. These are beginning to estab-
lish the fact that in the hour of dissolution,
when mortal faculties are beginning to fail, and
the senses become obscured, certain activities —
and those emphatically not such activities as may
be compared to the leap of a dying candle flame
—begin to reveal themselves.
It is, for example, entirely accepted by all
who have given thought to the subject, whether
by personal investigation or by the study of
evidence, that at or about the time of death
examples continually and frequently take place of
what is known as "telepathic communication"
between the dying person and those with whom
he is in mental sympathy.
Many theories have been formed on the sub-
ject, but at least there emerges from them all
35
What Happens After Death?
the solid fact that certain of the deepest faculties
of man, so far from sharing in the dissolution
and failure that accompany the death of the
body, are actually released by such dissolution
into an activity never before experienced.
What conclusion can be drawn from these
facts except that the mortality is not entire — that
the deepest identity of a man, that is to say, can
energise and exist apart from his body ?
For Christians, of course, the question is
settled. It is quite impossible for anyone who
accepts the Resurrection of Christ as a fact to
be content with vague doctrines of "absorption
into the Soul of the World," or of that
Pantheism towards which the non-Christian
thought of the present day is so rapidly moving.
What Happens After Death?
of the writers in this book, "Death means final
extinction of consciousness," but faith in what
lies beyond this present world of sights and
sounds is with me a vital part of self-conscious-
ness. "I know," said the Patriarch of old,
"that my Redeemer liveth . . . and though
after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in
my flesh shall I see God."
Is not the experience expressed in those all-
familiar words a part of every man's self-
consciousness? In the case of this man Job,
his primal belief concerning physical death was
not the result of any argument, but it was a
part of his rational and conscious life. He
could not get away from it. I doubt if any
man is actually able to rid himself completely
of this belief. Dr. Max Nordau himself, seems
to me to admit this consciousness of the
"Hereafter" when he bemoans the fact that
men shrink back from the notion of "Nothing-
ness after Death." To him it is a piteous spec-
tacle to see men "desperately clinging to the
fond self-deception of a continuation of some
sort of life after death." But the fact remains
that throughout the ages there has been such a
spectacle. "Looking at the religion of the lower
races as a whole," says Dr. Tylor in his "Primi-
tive Culture," "we shall at least not be ill-
advised in taking as one of the general and
principal elements the doctrine of the soul's
45
What Happens After Death?
future life." This is a statement that seems
to be beyond dispute. The answer of all the
ages is not "Nothing," but "Something" after
Death.
Even the pagan attitude was affirmative
rather than negative. The philosophy of the
king's counsellor in the court of the old Saxon
dynasty is very suggestive of this. It is told
in connection with the narrative of the conver-
sion of King Edward of Northumbria, accord-
ing to the historian. When missionaries of
Augustine came and waited before the Saxon
monarch and his lords, they were at first inclined
to repudiate them and their doctrine. At last one
of the counsellors arose and said : "Thou know-
est, O King, that ofttimes on a winter's night,
when we are assembled within this dimly lighted
hall to do business, a swallow will come from
the night, pass from darkness into darkness
again. So it is with the human soul. We
come we know not whence, and we go we know
not whither. If, therefore, these new teachers
can tell us aught concerning whence we come
and whither we go, let us hear them."
" Final extinction of consciousness " was
evidently not acceptable even in pagan belief.
Of course, a man may set himself against
all such beliefs in the "Hereafter." He may
make believe not to believe, but he does not
thereby rid himself of this universal conscious-
46
What Happens After Death?
ness. His rational self wars against his unbelief.
His attitude of unbelief is not only un-Biblical,
but wholly unphilosophical as well.
Socrates, when asked where he would choose
to be buried, made reply : "Bury me where you
will, if you can catch me." There you have the
wisdom of the wisest of ancient philosophers.
Like Job of old, he declined to entertain the
conception that "Death was the extinction of
consciousness." Though after the flesh worms
destroy the body was a fact present to the mind
of Socrates as well as to that of Job. But he
did not infer from it that there was "Nothing-
ness after Death."
To my mind it is not only utterly un-
Biblical and unphilosophical, but also irrational
to give Death the importance in life that is in-
volved in the denial of the "Hereafter." Doubt-
less Death is a crisis in so far as it involves
change and transition. But it surely is not the
last law of life. "The maid sleepeth," said our
Lord Jesus Christ. Could any view be more
delightfully suggestive?
" Is immortality really something so ardently
to be yearned after?" says Dr. Nordau.
In answer to that, I can only say for myself
it is the most ardent desire of my life.
When we formulate our doctrine concern-
ing the "Hereafter" it is not of ourselves alone
we must think, but of those who love us. "Lead,
47
What Happens After Death?
kindly light," is a bewildering hymn to me, but
I shall never cease to bless the writer of it if
only for those lines :
"And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since and lost
awhile."
Take away this hope of the "Hereafter,"
and what is left for us but despair? As the
Apostle says : " Let us eat, drink, and be merry,
for to-morrow we die." But that is a philosophy
that cuts the nerve of every noble effort and
heroic achievement in life. We may as well
write " Ichabod " over the national life if this
belief is to prevail. I recently had the privi-
lege of addressing an audience of working men
on the subject of "Self-culture," and at the close
one who was present declared that he did not
consider the subject had any meaning for him,
inasmuch as he believed in "the extinction of
consciousness after Death." I replied that I
quite endorsed his view. To my mind, as to
his, it seemed unnecessary to consider the ques-
tion of self-culture if a man regarded himself
as nothing better than the brute that perisheth.
THE FAMILIAR UNKNOWN
By A. P. SINNETT, the well-known Occultist
To everyone who may, like myself, have been
for half a long lifetime in familiar touch with
those conditions of human life lying beyond the
change commonly called death, there is some-
thing inexpressibly ludicrous in the grave dis-
cussion presented in this little book as to
whether there is or is not any continuity of con-
sciousness for us after we have each done with
our respective physical bodies. The matter has
nothing to do with opinions or arguments. For
vast multitudes all over the civilised world the
continuity of life in the case of friends who have
passed on — the invariable operation of the laws
which govern the immediate future — is personal
knowledge gained by the exercise of faculties of
superphysical sense which, though not yet exer-
cised by all, are so frequently available that
all who have enough intelligence to do so can
profit by them. One of the writers says :
"Physical science can have nothing to do with
the question one way or the other, as conscious-
ness lies beyond its domain." True, as the
words stand, but leave out the word "physical,"
49
What Happens After Death?
and the statement is grotesquely untrue. Super-
physical science is just as scientific as that which
relates merely to the low aspects of natural law,
and Dr. Max Nordau's comic impudence in de-
scribing as "a vain and inane delusion" what
multitudes of better-informed people know from
their own experience to be a fact, reminds me
of what Sir Oliver Lodge somewhere once wrote,
to the effect that in these days an expression of
"disbelief" in clairvoyance was not so much a
declaration of opinion as an exhibition of ignor-
ance.
The subject of what happens after death need
no longer be concerned with arguments based on
reason, though these are overwhelmingly in
favour of continued life in worlds beyond the
physical, since we have definite testimony to
work with from the large numbers who now, as
human evolution goes on, are exercising the
superphysical senses to which the phenomena
of the next world are as apparent as those
of this one to the limited comprehension of
people like Dr. Max Nordau.
To begin with, in the middle of the last
century superior wisdom guiding the evolution
of human intelligence started Spiritualism to
give the current generation proof of a kind it
could understand that there was a life after this,
and another plane of consciousness. Millions
availed themselves of the opportunities afforded,
5°
What Happens After Death?
and other millions were silly enough to think
that because a fringe of imposture gathered
round the manifestation, there was no reality
within the fringe. But Spiritualism was not
designed to do more than establish the broad
fact. Later developments led to the expansion
of Occult Science, which showed how it was
possible to range the next plane of existence
while still in the body, and bring back definite
information. A vast envelope of subtle matter
surrounds this earth. Physical senses cannot
apprehend it, but finer senses rapidly develop-
ing among us do. That is the next world in
which we all of us first awaken after shedding
the physical vehicle of consciousness, and all
who are earnest in pursuit of knowledge will find
abundant satisfaction in the literature of Theo-
sophy, which has grown to such magnificent
proportions during the last thirty years.
Life "beyond the grave," to use an old-
fashioned phrase, is much more certain than
life beyond the Channel for all crossing over
from Dover to Calais, and many of us know
much more about it than the untravelled
majority know about France. But to go into
detail it is necessary to write books (as I have
done several times), not merely to contribute a
few remarks to a controversy which ought to be
regarded as no less out of date than a dispute
as to whether the earth is round or flat.
51
MY BELIEF
By ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER,
the well-known Authoress
MY belief as to the future state is summed up in
the last verse of Richard Baxter's perfect hymn :
" My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim ;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with Him."
That is all I have to go upon ; and it is
enough.
THE UNDYING SOUL
By the Rev. A. C. DIXON, B.A., D.D. (of the
Metropolitan Tabernacle)
DOES the invisible part of man continue to
exist after the visible part has turned to dust?
Every man is his body plus something more,
and the something more is greater than his
body. Without any fine-spun definitions we
will consider the soul as meaning that part of us
which thinks, loves, rejoices, suffers, approves
the right and condemns the wrong.
Ralph Wells, in defining the soul to a class
of ragged children, said, "The soul is that
which thinks, loves and feels." "Yes," said
a little ragged girl, "and aches so." There
are times when the soul does ache, and there
are times when it mounts up on wings of joy.
The immortality of the soul is, first of all,
suggested by Nature. We plant a seed in the
springtime, and in autumn we reap the same
kind of seed. The thing that continues in the
seed is the vital force, the life. The particles
may be different, but the life is the same. Take
out the life, and it is all dead matter. The re-
appearance of this life in bud and leaf and flower
53
What Happens After Death?
at least suggests that the life mental, moral,
and spiritual in us may continue after death.
The fact that the soul is not seen is no proof
against its existence, but rather presumption in
favour of its continuance, for there is no micro-
scope which has yet revealed to the eye the life
of the seed.
It is said that while Dr. James Armstrong
was preaching on the immortality of the soul,
an atheistic physician rose and asked him if
he had ever seen the soul. "No," replied
Armstrong, "I have never seen a soul."
The physician continued, "Did you ever
hear a soul ? "
"No."
" Did you ever taste a soul ? "
"No."
" Did you ever smell a soul ? "
"No."
"Did you ever feel a soul?"
"Yes, thank God," replied the pious
preacher.
"Well," said the physician, "there are four
of the five senses against one that there is a
soul."
Dr. Armstrong then asked, "Did you ever
see a pain ? "
The physician had to confess, "No."
" Did you ever hear a pain ? "
"No."
54
What Happens After Death?
"Did you ever taste a pain?'*
"No."
" Did you ever smell a pain ? "
"No."
"Well, then, there are four senses against
one that there is pain, and yet you know there
is pain. So I know there is a soul."
The preacher might have asked the doctor,
"Did you ever see your brain, or smell your
brain, or taste your brain, or hear your brain ? "
"No."
"Well, there are four senses against one that
you have any brain." The invisible part of us
is the real part. The unseen is the eternal. The
body is the casket which holds the jewel of the
soul.
Again, the immortality of the soul is taught
by universal consciousness. The rude savage
believes in a future state. The Indian buries
with his comrade the blanket, the bow and
arrow, believing that he will need these things
in the happy hunting grounds of the future.
Even modern infidelity does not deny it.
When the champion blasphemer of America
stood over the corpse of his brother, he spoke
of the star of hope which the soul sees in the
night. The heart is sometimes wiser than the
head.
In order to express his hostility to Chris-
tianity, one may in a moment of weakness de-
E 55
What Happens After Death?
clare that he expects to die like a dog, and that
will be the last of him ; but if you were to look
into his face and tell him that you believe there
is nothing in him higher than you find in the
dog, he would be insulted. And yet if he con-
tinues to assert that he does not belong to a
higher grade than the dog, he is apt to de-
generate into a dog-like character.
Mr. Spurgeon tells of an English pastor who,
after he had preached on the immortality of the
soul, was approached by one of his parishioners,
who told him that he did not believe in the
teaching of his sermon. "There is no differ-
ence," he said, "between the man and the
dog."
"Well," replied the preacher, "I really
thought that I was furnishing food for people
who had souls; if I had known that there was a
dog among them, I might have brought bones
for him." The man did not enjoy this personal
and practical application of his own admission.
Suggested by Nature, taught by universal
consciousness, the immortality of the soul is
confirmed by observation. If you will turn to
any first-class book on mental philosophy, you
will find instances in which memory has grown
stronger while the body has grown weaker.
There are cases on record where page after
page in foreign languages, long forgotten, have
been repeated by men on beds of sickness. A
56
What Happens After Death?
friend told me that, when he was thrown from
a horse and almost killed, the panorama of his
past life came before him ; impressions that had
faded from memory, while he was physically
strong, were revived during the time of weak-
ness.
So imagination is sometimes most brilliant
when the body is weakest. I have known at
least two or three men whose reason was as
vigorous just a moment before they died as it
ever was in their days of physical strength.
If you have ever been in Mammoth Cave,
Kentucky, and stood over the River Styx, you
will remember that it disappears under the
cavern walls. Up to the very point of disap-
pearance the current is swift. Is there a man
on earth foolish enough to suppose that there
is no river after the swift current has disap-
peared ? Does he not believe, with a conviction
that amounts to certainty, that the river, though
hidden, continues to flow on ? And when up
to the point of dying we find memory, imagina-
tion, reason, love and conscience as strong, if
not stronger, than ever before, is there not a
presumption which amounts to a conviction of
certainty that these faculties of the soul will
continue to live after the body dies? In fact,
that the memory is sometimes strongest when
the body is weakest goes rather to suggest that
the body is a weight which the memory has to
57
What Happens After Death?
carry, and when it gets rid of the body memory
will assert its full strength.
The immortality of the soul, suggested by
Nature, taught by universal consciousness, and
confirmed by observation, is finally established
by revelation. The words "immortal" and
"immortality" occur six times in the Bible.
They are two words in the Greek, one of which
means "incorruptible" and the other "death-
less." The word meaning "incorruptible" is
applied to God Himself in i Tim. i. 17, and is
so translated by the revisers. In Rom. ii. 7 are
the words, "To them who by patient continuance
in well-doing seek for glory and honour and im-
mortality, eternal life." The revision correctly
renders it "incorruption," which we are to seek
diligently.
The word which means " deathlessness "
occurs in i Tim. vi. 16, and refers to the Lord
Jesus, "Who only hath immortality, dwelling
in the light which no man can approach unto."
The Deity of Jesus, dwelling in this unapproach-
able light, cannot die. He took upon Him the
humanity which could die, but His Deity is
deathlessness.
This Scripture does not even intimate that
wicked men will cease to exist after death. "It
is appointed unto men once to die, and after this
the judgment." God cannot die and live again,
but man can.
§8
What Happens After Death?
The difference between immortality and
eternal life is clearly intimated in these Scrip-
tures. Immortality means everlasting existence,
but eternal life is not eternal existence. Dead
things exist. I can imagine a piece of steel
existing a million years, but after the million
years have passed it will be as dead as it is now.
Corpses exist. Men dead in trespasses and in
sins on this side of the grave exist, and they
will exist after death. One does not begin really
to live until he has accepted Christ; but he
exists.
Eternal life is a present possession, not a
future continuity. "He that believeth on the
Son hath everlasting life." Write the little
word HATH in capital letters, for eternal life
is in the present tense. It is the gift of God
through Jesus Christ. Immortality was im-
parted when God created man in His own image.
Sin brought death, which is separation from
God, but it did not bring non-existence. Man
continued to exist after he had sinned. To say
that the words "perish," "die," "destruction"
mean annihilation is to speak unscripturally and
unscientifically. Science knows no annihila-
tion ; it simply recognises changes of form and
substance. Death does not bring about anni-
hilation of the body. We keep it several days
after death, and tenderly lay it away beneath the
flowers.
59
What Happens After Death?
Separation from God, Who is the source of
life, is the death of the soul in time and eternity.
Hence we are told in 2 Thess. i. 9 that the
wicked "shall be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and
from the glory of His power."
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus
(Luke xvi.) it is made plain that reason,
memory and imagination continue to exist after
the death of the body. The rich man in Hades
uses the word "therefore"; he reasons.
Abraham said to him, "Son, remember." And
his request that Lazarus shall be sent back to
earth, to rise from the dead and startle his
brethren into repentance, shows that imagina-
tion still exists. This testimony of Jesus that
the reason, memory and imagination of the
wicked continue to exist after death is final, and
settles the question once for all.
60
THE MISBELIEFS OF RELIGION
By Sir HIRAM S. MAXIM, C.E., M.E.
THERE is not one little particle of evidence to
show that we live after we die, in the sense that
preachers would have us believe.
Mankind, like all other animals and plants,
has been developed into his present condition by
natural selection and the survival of the fittest
for the environment in which he finds himself.
Small changes in body and brain, going on for
vast periods of time, have produced the man of
to-day, but it should not be supposed that these
changes and developments have stopped. Im-
portant changes are now taking place in the
brain of man ; he is developing his thinking
powers, and as time goes on he will waste less
of his time and money in propitiating and
making peace with the unseen phantoms of the
air. It certainly is not difficult for us to under-
stand that the man who thought the most of his
life, and had the greatest dread of death, especi-
ally in the early ages, would be the one who stood
the best chance of surviving and of propagating
his species — that is, men like himself.
Man's passionate love of women and chil-
61
What Happens After Death?]]
dren, and his horror of death, became intensified
as time went on. He could not bear the idea
that death was the end of all. "The wish was
the father of the thought." In human affairs,
wherever a great want manifests itself, a remedy
is sure to be forthcoming, and in this case the
quack doctor of religion appeared on the scene.
He was quite ready to deal out everlasting life
and happiness in another world after death for a
consideration, and at the same time to consign
those who refused to take his medicine and pay
for it to everlasting torments of the most excruci-
ating description in a fire and brimstone hell.
As ages passed, other doctors of religion
modified and elaborated their doctrines, until an
extremely complicated and contradictory system
was evolved — a religion so extremely ridiculous
and impossible that it required a lot of faith to
believe it. The result was that thinking men of
intelligence could not accept the foolish and
absurd dogmas of the priests.
This was a serious trouble, but it was even-
tually overcome in a very thorough and effective
manner. The priests killed off the unbelievers,
generally by burning them alive.
This drastic treatment put a check upon
thinking, and stopped the growth of the human
mind for more than a thousand years.
Religion was booming from the fourth to the
eighteenth century. It was a splendid business —
62
What Happens After Death?
in fact, an ideal business. The priests were well
paid, lived lives of luxury, and did not have to
deliver the goods. The result was that the pro-
fession became overcrowded, and new means
were invented to get more money out of the faith-
ful. The invention of Purgatory and the sale
of indulgences brought immense sums into the
Church.
Historians tell us that between the fourth and
eighteenth century more than a thousand millions
of mankind lost their lives in Europe, Asia
Minor, and Northern Africa on account of re-
ligion. This dreadful period of our history is
now referred to as the Dark Ages.
Fortunately for man, the priests quarrelled
among themselves, and this gave the human
mind a chance to develop and get rid of some
of the most bothersome superstitions. I have
lately read an article on this subject which com-
pares Christianity with the older religions of the
world, and would have us believe that it is more
worthy to endure, because it teaches loving-
kindness.
Nothing could be farther from the truth than
this ridiculous statement. Christianity has been,
without doubt, the worst and the wickedest in-
stitution that ever afflicted a suffering world. It
has destroyed vastly more lives, and caused in-
finitely more human suffering, than all the other
religions that the world has ever known.
63
What Happens After Death?
While in Paris some years ago I had the
honour of dining with one of the partners of Mr.
Andrew Carnegie; Viva Kananda, the learned
Hindu philosopher, was also one of the guests.
A lady who was present asked him the question :
"What becomes of us after death? " His reply
was simple and to the point : " Madam, I do not
know; I have never been dead." She said to me
that one would have supposed that so learned a
man with such a reputation would have been
able to answer this simple question. I told her
that any little ecclesiastical fledgeling or Salva-
tion Army captain would have been able to give
her a definite reply at once, but had the learned
Hindu done the same she might have turned on
him and asked : " How do you know ? "
I proclaim myself the Pope of my own re-
ligion. This is a material world in which we
live. All the matter that goes to make up our
bodies, like all other matter, is eternal ; it has
always existed, and will always exist. Remove
all matter from the universe and we should have
only an infinitely cold and an infinitely dark
vacuum. As far as the soul, the mind, or the
spiritual part is concerned, this, like electricity, is
only a condition of matter ; it is not eternal in the
same sense that matter is. It has been trans-
mitted to us by our parents, and we, on our part,
are able to transmit it to our children ; so we live
again in our descendants.
64
What Happens After Death?
The unfortunates of the race who fail to pass
their soul on to the next generation are for ever
lost; with them death indeed ends all. They
will not live again in the minds or souls of de-
scendants, neither will they descend into a fire
and brimstone hell, simply because this ingeni-
ous invention of the priests, which has enabled
the priests to live off the stupidly pious, has no
real existence.
DEATH IS NOT THE END !
By Sir ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., B.A., LL.D.
"THE nearer I approach death I seem to gain a
glimpse of the shore and to be, at last, about to
sail into harbour after a long voyage." Such
was the reverie of Cicero, the great pagan
philosopher, 2,000 years ago. And he went on
to quote the following words of Cyrus the Elder
on his death-bed : " Do not suppose, my dearest
sons, that when I shall have left you I shall
exist nowhere, or lose my being, for not even
while I remained with you did you see my soul,
yet you inferred from my own conduct that it was
in the body; be assured, therefore, that its ex-
istence is all the same, even though you will
continue not to see it."
Do not some of the contributions to this
symposium compare very unfavourably with the
thoughts and words of classic paganism ? There
are only two books from which we can learn any-
thing respecting the future and the unseen-
Nature and Revelation. And those grand men,
the great philosophers of ancient paganism, at-
tained to all that in this sphere Nature can
66
What Happens After Death?
supply. But is this the limit of our knowledge
in Christian England?
If all who are afflicted with blindness agreed
to deny the existence of the sun, should we con-
sent to treat its existence as an open question ?
And the denials of agnostics and infidels cannot
be allowed to discredit our belief in the Bible as
a Divine revelation. Nor can we forget the
manner in which the revelation is accredited.
"John Stuart Mill observed that mankind cannot
be too often reminded that there was once a
man of the name of Socrates. Still more im-
portant is it to remind mankind again and again
that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once
stood in their midst." These words are quoted
from Dr. Harnack, the greatest of living rational-
ists ; and they represent the sort of teaching that
is common nowadays in many a qiiasi-Christian
pulpit. But how different the faith of the
Christian ! "We know that the Son of God is
come " ; and the inspired record of His teaching
is an end of controversy on every subject which
falls within it. And this being so, we are not
left to grope in darkness for a solution of the
question, "What happens to us when we die ? "
Beginning with the Latin Fathers, theolo-
gians have claimed to anticipate "the judgment
of the great Assize " respecting the eternal
destiny both of individuals and of races and
classes of men. But what concerns us here is
What Happens After Death?
the teaching, not of theology, but of the Son of
God. And while the Bible is not designed to
solve academic questions, its teaching is full and
clear in respect of all that we are concerned to
know. Within that category falls the question,
"What happens to us when we die?" and the
answer given to it is explicit. At death the
righteous pass into a condition of conscious
happiness, and the unrighteous of conscious
misery.
Who is righteous, and who unrighteous?
That is not the question now before us; and a
discussion of it would be deemed unsuitable in
the pages of this little book. But the fact that
at death men do not pass out of existence, but
into a new condition of existence, is accredited
by Him Who is both the Saviour and the Judge,
and Who declared expressly that all His teaching
was Divine. The answer to our problem, there-
fore, is no matter of mere opinion or of guess-
work. "God Who in times past spake unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days
spoken unto us by His Son." This is no mere
conjecture; "We know that the Son of God has
come."
And He has drawn aside the veil which
screened from human sight the world into which
we pass at death. And it is not the "inter-
mediate state " only that He has unveiled. For
after declaring that now, and in this present
68
What Happens After Death?
world, there is life for all who hear His voice,
He adds, "Marvel not at this : for the hour is
coming in the which all that are in the graves
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they
that have done good, unto the resurrection of
life; and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of judgment."
Now here we are not dealing with theological
doctrines of a kind that are a matter of contro-
versy, but with basic truths plainly revealed by
the Lord Himself. And this being so, any one
who rejects them declares himself an infidel.
Such then is the answer which Christianity
gives to the question here at issue. Death is
not the end of human existence, but a crisis
after which existence continues in a new phase.
And that phase,, moreover, is only temporary.
Scripture tells us something about the bodies
in which the just will pass to glory; but as to
the others it is strangely silent. As I have seen
prisoners on their discharge from jail resuming
the wretched garments they wore upon arrest, I
have sometimes wondered whether the unjust
will be reclothed in bodies akin to those in which
they sinned. My purpose here, however, is not
to indulge in idle speculations of any kind, but
rather to indicate what Christianity plainly
reveals upon the subject of this symposium.
NO ONE GOMES BACK TO TELL
By JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON
THE answer to the question is impossible. To
state, however, what we hope, perhaps more
than what we believe, is far easier, presuming
that we are fully prepared to base our belief on
the statements of the Bible, of which no one
would desire to speak with doubt. We may say,
in a word, that our universal belief — the belief
we wish to hold — is the old assertion that those
who have done well shall have "everlasting life,"
and that those who have done evil shall go into
" everlasting fire." The last two words, how-
ever, are calculated to shake the belief of those
who are most desirous to believe.
Let us regard this point, since it creates ex-
treme difficulties. Whence came the belief that
fire will be the punishment of those who, being
dead, can feel nothing, or, being dead for
myriads of years, can have left behind no grain
capable of destruction ? Consider the style of
writing of those who may have promulgated such
doctrines, and also whence they deduced them.
Recent years, nay, recent days, have proved to
us by discoveries made that human beings lived
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What Happens After Death?
at the time the world was undergoing strange
changes; there was the glacial period, the fire
period, and others.
Those human beings may have heard of both
through early legends. Fire may have appeared
to them the most awful of the two calamities;
so would not fire have seemed to their crude, un-
instructed, almost animal minds the most ap-
palling horror that could fall on them ? Might
not hell, as we speak of it, viz., "everlasting
fire," have struck them as the most terrible
punishment that could befall the guilty? On
the other hand, "everlasting life," to the Eastern
mind, would depict — it does so to this day —
calm and placid joys. It does so to the most
devout of us, and depicts happiness such as we
ourselves imagine Heaven to be, viz., the ever-
lasting life in which we shall all share if we
are of those who have done well.
Yet on this point, on which the most saintly
as well as the most evil are still embarrassed,
no information is forthcoming. No visitation of
those we have loved dearly, of those who have
been our friends, is ever vouchsafed; yet all of
us aspire to learn something, to receive one
word, one token that shall make things clear to
us. We want absolute proof, tangible signs of
what will happen when we have left this world,
but no one comes back to tell us. We try to
believe — the veriest atheist would believe and
F 71
What Happens After Death?
respect if all could be made clear, made sure.
There would be no sinners on this earth if they
who are inclined to sin knew what their deserts
would be; if they who now lead good and pure
lives could know that their reward was certain.
The latter merit that knowledge because even
the good would desire to be sure; the former
would at once reform and indulge no more in
scoffing and deriding a future life as that of a
monk's or an old wife's tale. But no one comes
back to tell us, and so, be we either good or
bad, there lingers ever with us all the dread
reflection that we have no actual knowledge of
what happens to us when we die.
THE BIBLICAL VIEW
By Rev. DINSDALE T. YOUNG (President of the
Wesleyan Conference)
IT is the pre-supposition of the Christian re-
ligion that we shall live again, and it seems
to me that the whole appeal of Christianity must
lose its reality unless founded upon the doctrine
of a second life.
There is a story told of Lord Tennyson that
he was discussing with Bishop Lightfoot one
day the question of Christianity, and that they
both emphatically declared that immortality was
the fundamental matter in Christianity.
I believe that this is a conclusion from which
there can be no reasonable appeal. The Bible,
which we accept as our great spiritual authority,
is pervaded with the doctrine of immortality.
The Old Testament has many hints of it for
students, though some doubting readers of to-
day do not choose to admit their presence. As
a matter of fact, however, I believe you will
find that the doctrine of a future life is presented
in the very first book of the Bible, and certainly
in the case of some of the Old Testament writers
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What Happens After Death?
it was a conviction that had almost the sureness
which might mark the Christian believer.
Then, when we come to the New Testament,
in the remarkable words of St. Paul it is brought
to light in the Gospel.
Our Lord Jesus Christ distinctly taught the
doctrine that we shall live again; so did all the
Apostles. Passage after passage might be cited
from the New Testament books which clearly in-
dicate this.
Then, again, the resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ is to me the chief evidence of the
life to come ; and the Resurrection is an his-
torical fact which is better attested than almost
any other fact of history. Such is the verdict of
scholars and historical students who have very
carefully weighed all the evidence. Never be-
fore was there such good reason for accepting
the resurrection of Christ as an historical fact
as there is to-day.
Now, granted that Christ rose again from
the dead, you have an indisputable demonstra-
tion of the fact that we shall live again. You
sometimes hear people say that no one has ever
come back from the world beyond to bear witness*
to its existence, but that suggestion is abso-
lutely refuted by the resurrection of our Lord.
No one can honestly or with any show of reason
or accuracy declare that no one ever came back,
for He came back. I put the resurrection of
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What Happens After Death?
Jesus Christ as the foundation evidence of the
fact that we shall live again.
Then Nature appears to me to confirm that
suggestion of a future life. Bishop Butler, in
his great "Analogy," a work the main points
of which never can be overthrown, has argued
very powerfully that Nature abounds in hints
and suggestions of the future life.
We see in human nature, in the nature of
animals and in the vegetable world, startling
illustrations which no thoughtful person can
reject — wonderful hints of life under new con-
ditions in another state.
Then another great evidence, as it seems to
me, that we shall live again consists in our
conscience. Now perhaps, next to the resurrec-
tion of our Lord, the ministry of conscience in
every human being is the strongest indication
of a life to come. Conscience distinctly preaches,
to those who will listen, that there is another
world. Conscience is constantly appealing to
us on this point. People often stifle their con-
science, and, as St. Paul put it, they "sear"
their conscience so that it loses its power; but
if it is not stifled or seared it bears an irresistible
message of a future life. If people will only
listen to their conscience as it speaks within
them, it seems to me that they must be abso-
lutely driven to believe that we shall all live
again.
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What Happens After Death?
The wonderful faculty which dwells in every
human being is in truth a great prophet of the
life beyond.
Another very striking suggestion that we
shall live again is to be found in the all but
universality of that conviction. Among all
nations and in all times there has been a belief
in immortality. Among heathen peoples the
belief often assumes very grotesque forms, but
it none the less exists ! How can we account
for the universal prevalence of the idea and its
continual prevalence except by the supposition
that it is an instinct implanted by our Maker in
the human breast?
Another important consideration which has a
very strong influence upon my own mind is the
fact that a belief in immortality has always had
such an ennobling influence wherever it has
been accepted. No one ever taught more beauti-
fully or more impressively than Tennyson did
how the doctrine of immortality points to all
that is moral and noble in human character.
Tennyson speaks in one of his poems of the
great moral qualities, and he says something like
this: "Take the charm 'for ever' from them,
and they crumble into dust." I believe Tenny-
son's doctrine to be entirely true ! Wherever
the doctrine of a future life is received it is a
check upon sin ; there can be no doubt that the
doctrine of immortality has been one of the
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What Happens After Death?
most powerful influences in leading men to
accept the Saviour and to lead good lives.
On the other hand, wherever the doctrine
is disbelieved you lose one of the greatest forces
for all that is moral and spiritually good.
Finally, another consideration which seri-
ously impresses me is this — that the very noblest
intelligences and spirits in history have held the
doctrine, and that a great deal of their nobleness
is to be attributed to their having held it.
Not to go back to the earlier ages, think of
the influence the belief in a future life has had
on some of the master minds of modern times.
Think of the fact that it was an intense reality
to such men as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury,
Bishop Westcott, Robert Browning, Alfred
Tennyson.
These men were enthusiasts for that doctrine,
and if we look into the history of humanity we
shall find, I think without exception, that all
the very noblest personalities have retained this
doctrine most definitely. The argument in
favour of a belief in immortality based on the
qualities of those who have held such a belief
seems to me to be an argument which is un-
assailable, or, if not unassailable, at all events
invincible.
77
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY-IS
IT REASONABLE?
By J. ARTHUR HILL
IN these days of widespread bereavement, and
when the thoughts of even those who have lost
no dear ones are turned to the graver things of
life, it is natural that the question of Immortality
should come very much to the front in many
minds. The world-old query, more or less ob-
scured in ordinary days, insistently presents
itself : " If a man die, shall he live again ? "
Religion has always said "Yes"; Science — or
some of its votaries, in the name of science —
has sometimes said " No " ; and the general mind
has naturally been perplexed.
What is the state of affairs now — is there any
nearer approach to agreement? Can we reach
any firmer ground in this momentous matter?
I say that undoubtedly we can ; for a summing-
up of Science and Philosophy at the present day
is vastly more favourable to the religious view
than ever before. Indeed, Science is now de-
finitely on the side of Religion, and the average
mind is no longer pulled two ways. We can be
religious without being unscientific; we can be
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What Happens After Death?
scientific without being irreligious. And this is
as it ought to be.
As a result, very largely, of investigations
and general advance in certain branches of
psychology during the last thirty years, the best
scientific minds now take an entirely different
view of the soul from that of the earlier scientists
such as Biichner and Hackel.
The body is no longer looked on as producing
the mind as the liver produces bile — in the
materialist's famous and foolish phrase — but as
transmitting it. The mind works through the
body, but is in no way dependent on it for exist-
ence. The body is merely the vehicle or organ
for the mind's manifestation in the present
world. Naturally, if the material instrument
gets damaged — as in apoplexy by a blood-clot
on the brain — the mind's manifestation is inter-
fered with : the mechanism is out of order, the
current does not flow. But it is only a block,
not an extinction — the mind is there all the same,
as it is — equally really — in sleep, which is a
similar, though in this case quite healthy, ces-
sation of manifestation. And if the organ is
smashed completely, as at death or soon after-
wards, it makes no difference to the spirit. The
latter simply withdraws when the body ceases
to be usable for manifestation. It "goes up
higher " ; quits the material world, where it had
lessons to learn but which has now served its
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What Happens After Death?
purpose ; and turns to other and higher activities
of a wider range, in the spiritual world — though
not forgetting loved ones left behind, for there
is good reason to believe, on purely scientific
grounds, that the "dead " can still interest them-
selves in our affairs, that they often are still with
us and aware of our thoughts and needs, and
that they exert themselves to comfort and to help
the sorrowing and burdened soul.
This "transmissive," view of the soul's
relation to the body was held by the greatest
psychologist of modern times — Professor William
James, M.D., of Harvard — who expounded it
only a few years ago, and not long before his
lamented death, in his brilliant little book
"Human Immortality," in the Ingersoll Lecture
series. And it is held, on strictly scientific
grounds, mark you — and as a result of his own
investigations — by the most famous scientific
man in England, who is at the same time prob-
ably the best-known scientist in the whole world
to-day, namely, Sir Oliver Lodge. Other great
names might easily be added : Sir William
Crookes, President of the Royal Society; Sir
William Barrett, the foremost scientist in Ire-
land; Professor Bergson, the greatest living
philosopher, whether of France or the world;
Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. G. W. Balfour, Dr.
F. C. S. Schiller, leader of the Pragmatists in
England — all these are names taken at random
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What Happens After Death?
from the large array of the foremost thinkers of
our time who accept a doctrine of the soul which
permits or definitely involves its independence
of the body and its consequent survival of that
body's death.
A further question here arises, as to
whether "survival" is the same as "im-
mortality." Strictly, it is not. The latter
is usually understood to mean endless life
as individuals, while survival of bodily death
does not necessarily involve endlessness. It
may be that after much growth and advance
as individuals in the heavenly world, we sooner
or later drop the limits and fetters of personality,
achieving a more intimate union with the Divine,
such as some mystics have attained even while
on earth. This, or something like this, seems
a reasonable supposition, for it is a common-
place of our experience that perfect happiness
is most nearly attained by sacrifice of the self,
by giving up our own wants and surrendering
ourselves to God. "In His will is our peace,"
as Dante has it; and perhaps, when the spirit
is purged and sufficiently worthy, it may really
and truly enter into the joy of its Lord and be
with Him in closest union. But it is likely that
many stages of progress, as individuals, will
precede that beatific culmination.
Another cheering thing about modern psy-
chology is its new view of the structure, so to
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What Happens After Death?
speak, of human personality. We all are dis-
gusted with ourselves at times, in our failure to
live anywhere near up to the level of our own
conceptions and ideals; and when we think of
the survival, or immortality, or even the lengthy
duration of our present self after death, we feel
a certain shrinking. Shall we not get very sick
of ourselves — shall we not weary of the eternal
struggle against our baser part? As the boy
said, quoted by Emerson : " It makes me so tired
when I think of ' for ever.' '
But psychology here steps in to the rescue.
It has established that our present self is only
a fraction of our total self. As Wordsworth
says: "We are greater than we know." We
are like icebergs — in Sir Oliver Lodge's simile
— which float with only one-twelfth of their bulk
above water, this twelfth, more or less, repre-
senting our present consciousness.
So we need not indulge exaggerated fears
about the tedium or stress of our own society in
the heavenly world, for we shall be different
from and larger than ourselves as known to us
now. Identity will continue, as identity con-
tinues between the ignorant child and the mature
wise man he develops into; but, as in the
parallel, there will be a gain, an accretion, a
growth, and we shall be changed. We do not
yet know what we shall be — not exactly or by
experience, which is yet to come in its due course
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What Happens After Death?
• — but we know enough to infer that our tran-
scendental self is really a much greater thing
than the small and often very unsatisfactory self
which is now being manifested here through the
channel of the body. And with this scientific-
ally justified inference we can look forward with
contentment to the introduction to our wider self
which awaits us at the time of transition. It was
probably knowledge of this greater range of the
real total personality that led to the phrase
(quoted approvingly by Christ, but puzzling to
many) "Ye are gods" — i.e. you are greater and
more divine than you yourselves know (Psalm
Ixxxii. 6; St. John's Gospel x. 34).
It is sometimes asked : " Shall we know our
friends when our turn comes to join them on
the other side — will they not have changed, or
shall we not ourselves have changed out of
recognition in the interim, particularly if it has
been long ? "
The answer is that we shall know them, and
shall be known, perfectly; if we think other-
wise, or have doubts, it is because we are think-
ing how bodily changes make us unrecognisable
sometimes, in our earth life, to friends of thirty
or forty years ago.
But in the heavenly world recognition will
not depend on material bodies ; we shall put on
spiritual bodies, as St. Paul says, and shall per-
ceive each other's minds and souls much more
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What Happens After Death?
clearly than ever before — in other words, we
shall not only know each other but shall know
each other much better than we did in the earth
life when clogged by the material body through
which we saw only dimly.
And, as to changes, minds change less than
bodies. We meet old friends, school chums and
what not, after long separation, and at once the
old intimacy is re-established.
I have just had a striking illustration of this.
My dearest chum of twenty years ago has just
revisited the Old Country after long sojourn in
his adopted country — Canada, Pacific Coast.
Little correspondence had passed between us
after the first year or two, and I almost feared
to meet him; for it seemed that we must in-
evitably have diverged as to our individual
interests in life, our respective environments
having been so different; and this feeling of
strangeness, after the old times of affection and
close sympathy, would be painful.
But when the meeting came all was well.
My friend was the same good old fellow, the
same personality that I had known, and in half
an hour we felt as close as of old. True, each
had much to tell the other, each had developed
on different lines, but evidently the fact of our
ancient congeniality had ensured that any
further growth of the one would be of a kind
which would interest and attract the other. The
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What Happens After Death?
personality is the thing; its knowledge or ex-
perience is but a garment. So with after-death
recognitions. We need not fear that we shall
not know our dear ones, or that they will have
left us hopelessly behind. They will have much
to tell us, and there will be much comparing of
notes; but the mutual recognition of the selves
will be full and intimate and happy. Indeed it
may be — nay, it will be — that we shall be in
some sort necessary to their joy; "that they
without us should not be made perfect."
Therefore in these world-shaking times let
us hold to cheerfulness and faith. God is over
all ; the present life is but a dream, a discipline,
an education. It is better on before, when we
shall have awakened to the wider horizons that
await us — to the fuller life and activities, to the
companionship of those we have loved and tem-
porarily lost, and to the closer union with God,
who is Love itself.
THE THEOSOPHIG VIEW
By Mrs. ANNIE BESANT
ANSWERS to this question have been sought for
by man along various roads, and the answers
may be classified as religious, spiritualistic,
theosophic, and materialistic.
The last may be summed up in the statement
that nothing happens to us, because we cease to
exist when the body dies. The religious answers
are various, but all unite in the belief that we
continue to live beyond death.
The spiritualistic answers agree as to the re-
vival of the individual after the death of the
body, and a mass of evidence is proffered, which,
in the opinion of all who have carefully studied
it, places the fact of revival beyond dispute.
When every possible deduction has been made
for fraud, hallucination, self-deception, there
remains an irreducible minimum of evidence,
which is sufficient to prove that the man survives
on the other side of death. The evidence, as is
well known, is obtained through the class of
sensitives known as "mediums/' and is of the
most varied kinds — writing, speaking, materialis-
ing, under trance conditions or otherwise.
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What Happens After Death?
The answers given by theosophists depend
on investigations carried on by means of the exer-
cise of super-normal senses, sometimes born
with the person using them, sometimes de-
veloped by deliberate effort.
The theory as to these senses is easily stated.
Man is a spiritual intelligence clothed in matter.
This matter exists in our worlds in five main
states, differing from each other by the funda-
mental types of their atoms, the aggregations
of which form the materials of which each world
is composed.
For our purpose we may ignore the two
higher worlds, and consider only the three lower,
in which the normal evolution of man is going
on. These are : the physical world, from which
are drawn the materials forming our physical
bodies; the intermediate world, generally called
the astral world, from which are drawn the
materials forming the astral body, the seat of
sensations, desires, and emotions; the heavenly,
or mental world, from which are drawn the
materials forming the mental body, the seat of
thought.
The man himself, the spiritual intelligence,
the conscious being, uses these bodies of his
for thinking, feeling, and action in relation to
the worlds in which he lives and moves, and
in his normal everyday consciousness he is
active in these three worlds, working from the
G 87
What Happens After Death?
mental world through the cerebro-spinal system
in the physical body, and from the astral world
through the sympathetic system, the physical
body being the apparatus, the mechanism,
through which the forces of thought or of
desire are able to manifest themselves in the
physical world.
As Sir Oliver Lodge has pointed out, only
a part of man's consciousness works in the
physical body, but that part shows the three-
fold characteristics of the whole — thinking,
desiring, acting.
The greater part of man's consciousness,
according to this view, is outside man's
physical body, and can manifest itself through
the medium of the astral and mental bodies
in the astral and mental worlds. In "waking
consciousness" the activity is shown through
the physical body; but man is not "awake"
all the time.
Consciousness is active when the body
sleeps, and psychologists recognise and have
investigated the "dream-consciousness," and by
the study of dreams, of trance-conditions, hyp-
notic and mesmeric, they have accumulated a
number of facts which show that when the
senses are deadened and the brain is inactive,
the consciousness manifests certain powers more
extensive than it can show during the use of its
ordinary physical apparatus. These powers are
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What Happens After Death?
manifested by the consciousness through the
lesser dense medium of astral matter, the matter
of the "intermediate world," in which conscious-
ness performs functions actively when the body
is asleep.
To put it in other words, the consciousness
which works in the waking body is largely
withdrawn from the body when it sleeps, and
consciousness is less impeded in the exercise
of its powers when it is working outside the
dense and comparatively sluggish matter of the
physical body.
In certain conditions of very deep trance the
consciousness is almost withdrawn from the
astral as well as from the physical body, and
then it works in still rarer regions, and we have
the visions of saints, of great seers like Sweden-
borg, etc.
Now, physical, astral, and mental bodies
have all organs of perception, by which con-
sciousness perceives the corresponding external
worlds. The senses of sight, hearing, taste,
smell, touch are such, bringing the external
world into relation with human consciousness.
According to theosophical teachings, the
astral and mental bodies have also their organs
of perception, bringing the worlds from which
their materials are drawn into relation with
human consciousness. Hence, observation of
the phenomena of the astral and heavenly worlds
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What Happens After Death?
is possible for all those who have in the course
of their evolution, whether normally or by any
quickening process, brought into functional
activity these perceptive organs.
It is on observation carried on by means of
these that theosophists depend for their know-
ledge of after-death states. An increasing
number of students are able to carry on such
observations, and the records of these are accu-
mulating.
The conditions of the world in which our
consciousness works when outside the physical
body — whether leaving that body in sleep or
dead — are as various as those of the physical
world, and the observations of students must
vary according to the regions they investigate.
But certain broad facts emerge.
The man after death, in his desires and
emotions, is the same man as he was before
death ; hence, if his desires were such as need
a physical body for their satisfaction, he suffers
keenly from unsatisfied cravings, which only
gradually disappear by a process of slow starva-
tion ; the application of this knowledge to con-
duct leads a man to lessen such desires, and to
seek gratification rather in the class of desires
which pertain to emotions than in those which
pertain to appetites. ^Esthetic emotions, the
pursuit of knowledge, persist for the functioning
of consciousness in the astral or intermediate
90
What Happens After Death?
world, and help can be sent thence, by the wire-
less telegraphy of thought and emotion, to those
who are still labouring in the physical world.
Many an experience of happiness and of
suffering, as the results of the physical earth-
life, are engraven by the consciousness on the
tablets of the spirit's memory, and appear as
"conscience" in a subsequent life, as the im-
pulse to do the right or to abstain from the
wrong.
When the experiences of these results are
all assimilated and recorded in memory, the
man passes on into the heavenly world, and
there transmutes into faculty all mental and
emotional experiences of a pure and useful
nature. The work of the consciousness in the
heaven-world is this assimilation and trans-
mutation of experiences, and when all these are
thus changed the result passes on into the
spiritual consciousness of the man himself, who
retains the memory of all the experiences; but
when he puts forth a part of his consciousness
again to gather new food of experience in the
lower worlds, he implants in the new materials
he gathers round him only the results of past
experiences as faculties, not the facts of the
experiences as memories. The memories reside
in the spiritual consciousness, not in the part
which is embodied as mind, emotion, and
activity.
What Happens After Death?
Our work, then, on the other side of death
is the building of conscience and of faculty out
of the experiences gathered during physical life.
With these we return to a new earth-life, to
make further progress. Edward Carpenter
wrote truly : "Every pain that I suffered in one
body was a power which I wielded in the next."
By this process is evolution carried on, and we
pass out of weakness into strength, out of
ignorance into knowledge.
I have not touched here, in this dry record
of observed facts, on the joys of the larger life,
the loves which pass unbroken through death,
the glad companionships which irradiate im-
mortal life with beauty and with happiness.
Our future is in our own hands, for the Spirit,
who is Man, is the Inner Ruler Immortal ; we
create our future by our present, for we live in a
world of law, and for him who lives nobly Death
is but the entrance into a larger consciousness, a
fuller life.
CAN CONVERSE BE HELD WITH
THE SPIRITS OF FRIENDS?
By GEORGE E. WINTER
IF Shakespeare was right when he spoke of the
next world as "That undiscovered country f rom
whose bourne no traveller returns," then it
would be impossible to answer the momentous
question, "What happens to us when we die?"
We should be cut off from both sources of
knowledge. We should neither know of our
own experience nor from the experience of
others; we should be thrown back upon mere
theorising and speculation.
Fortunately, there is overwhelming evidence
that Shakespeare was wrong when he put in the
mouth of Hamlet the dogmatic assertion that
no traveller returns. There is now an ever-
increasing body of expert investigators who
point to a quite opposite conclusion. Not only
do the dead return, but they endeavour to give
us some sort of notion of the life led by the spirit
when it has thrown off the encumbrance of the
flesh.
The evidence comes in the most convincing
form through the phenomena of what is called
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What Happens After Death?
trance-mediumship. As the name suggests, a
"medium " is one whose organism may be used
as a bridge between this world and the next.
In some as yet unexplained way the bodies of
those possessing this extraordinary faculty may
be utilised by spirits who wish to communicate
with those who are still in the flesh. The
medium loses consciousness — passes into a
trance — and during this temporary oblivion the
body, with its nervous organisation, is more or
less successfully controlled by the spirit operator.
The nature of the evidence, and the reasons
for believing that the communications received
in this way do actually come from the spirits
of the deceased persons who claim to control
the medium, cannot be detailed here. It must
suffice to say that those who have had the
largest experience of these amazing phenomena
remained convinced that they have held con-
verse with the spirits of friends and relatives
long since consigned to the grave.
Now if you were quite certain that you were
talking to the spirit of one whom you knew and
loved on the earth, what would be the first
questions that would rise to your lips?
Naturally you would ask : Are you happy ?
Do you suffer pain, or are you free from the
innumerable ills that human flesh is heir to?
Do you remember your old earth life? Have
you a body, and do the old loves and desires
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What Happens After Death?
of the flesh still possess you ? What do you do
in your new life ? What sort of a world are you
in ? How do you pass your time ?
These are some of the inevitable questions
that would rush into your mind once you had
realised that you were enjoying the awful
privilege of converse with one who was dead.
The silence of the grave once broken you would
be rilled with an invincible desire to know the
nature of the fate that awaits all mankind.
It is scarcely necessary to say that such ques-
tions have been asked again and again, and if
the answers are not always in that definite form
which the questioner so eagerly desires, explana-
tions are not far to seek.
In the first place, it is naturally impossible
to obtain any proper conception of a super-
sensible world in terms of the sensible. When
spirits undertake to explain to us the nature of
the next life, and what goes on there, they have
no language with which to express their
thoughts, and we can never get a clear idea of
what their world may be like. It is as though
an explorer were attempting to describe a new
country in which everything is so different from
the old world that no comparisons are possible.
If we try to picture to ourselves the existence
that awaits each one of us on the death of the
body, we are chilled by the thought that life in
that other world must be shadowy and unsub-
97
What Happens After Death?
stantial. We imagine ourselves as formless
ghosts leading a dreary, dream-like existence,
cut off from the sunshine and reality of the
tangible earth.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
"The spirit body is as actual , and real to the
spirit," says one communicator, "as the old
earth body appeared to me, and its environments
are as palpable to its perceptions — it has simply
passed from one plane of conscious existence to
another." The invisible has become visible, and
the formerly visible things invisible.
Most people, it is affirmed, find the transition
and the awakening on the other side more
natural than they had expected, and they soon
become aware that they are in a real world
among real people, and are as much alive as
ever they were on earth. As one spirit ex-
pressed it : it was like waking in a strange bed-
room when on a holiday.
It is obvious, therefore, that there is no
drastic change in the personality brought about
by the shedding of the physical body. The old
personality survives with all its characteristic
memories, its individual peculiarities, its loves
and hates — even its prejudices. There is no
sudden illumination, no instantaneous conver-
sion of erring, sinful men and women into
angels of light. The spirit commences its new
life in another world just as it left off here — no
98
What Happens After Death?
better and no wiser. We pick up the thread
where it dropped from our nerveless hand when
we were surprised by the King of Terrors.
But the loss of the body ! Surely that makes
a profound difference?
One can well imagine that it is no great
hardship to many who have found their fleshly
tenement a prison-house of pain and suffering.
To those who dragged through life the heavy
load of a diseased or defective organism, the
shedding of their burden of flesh can only be
a subject for thankfulness and rejoicing. To
all it will be a gain. For if we are to believe the
assurances of those who have passed through
the great experience, we shall find the ethereal
body an infinitely free and more perfect medium
of expression than the body of flesh.
The question is often asked : Do the spirits
of the dead know what is taking place on the
earth ? Can the father, for example, who has
left wife and children unprovided for, view from
another sphere the hopeless struggles and suffer-
ings of those he has left behind ?
If this be so, then whatever advantages an
ethereal body may confer, whatever compen-
sations may fall to the lot of the spirit, the
condition of a vast number of sensitive souls
must be one of poignant anguish at seeing the
sorrow of those they love and in being able to
do nothing to assuage it.
99
What Happens After Death?
We are assured, however, that spirits are no
more conscious of our presence than we are of
theirs. The loss of the five senses closes every
avenue leading to the material world. Only on
rare occasions can the veil separating the two
states of existence be torn aside by those
possessing the mediumistic faculty.
It is true that memory still continues. May
not the uncertainty of the fate of those left
behind become a source of torture to spirits
separated from their loved ones by an impassable
barrier ?
Well, it is never contended that the condi-
tions in spirit life are those of undiluted bliss.
The spirit must progress, and progress is not
accomplished without effort and suffering.
Those who have left many duties undone, those
who have led lives of selfish indulgence, without
a thought for the sufferings around them, will
doubtless have to endure the sting of remorse
for opportunities neglected.
Would we have it otherwise ?
But sooner or later all will awake to the great
spiritual realities which bring happiness and
peace. The consciousness of imperfection and
unhappiness leads to repentance and aspiration,
and the upward path opens before the spirit
which truly desires to walk the better way.
Surely this is a higher and more inspiring
gospel than the old theological dogma of an
100
What Happens After Death?
everlasting hell of flames and torment to which
the majority of mankind will be assigned. It
is a doctrine in accordance with the highest
philosophical and religious truth, and is pre-
cisely the kind of revelation we should expect
from a traveller returned from that "dim
bourne " towards which we all have our faces
set.
TOI
WE CANNOT GOME TO AN END
By A. C. BENSON, C.V.O., M.A.
THE question of our immortality is far too
wide and intricate for me to enter upon an argu-
ment or discussion about it here. The proof is
cumulative, and contains a large subjective
element. I can here only summarise my own
belief, drawn from experience as interpreted by
reason.
My own belief is that life is a force, coming
out of the Mind and Essence of God, for ever
trying, for reasons unknown to us, to express
itself in matter.
I believe it to be as indestructible as matter ;
at least, I can conceive of no process by which
life or matter can either be originated or brought
to an end.
I therefore believe in a subsequent life, just
as I believe in a previous life — but under what
conditions I cannot say. But I do not believe
that personality depends on memory — it is rather
a matter of quality and temperament; and thus
the fact that our memory does not seem to
extend beyond one life is no disproof of pre-
existence.
1 02
IS THERE AN INTERMEDIATE
STATE ?
By the Rev. BENJAMIN BELL, B.D., Moderator of the
Presbyterian Church of England
THE subject is certainly one of solemn and per-
ennial interest, and it cannot be long absent from
the minds of most readers in these days of
national anxiety and war, when death may be
very near to our dear ones or ourselves.
I write from the standpoint of a Christian
who believes in the supreme authority of Our
Lord Jesus Christ on all such questions, and
recognises the testimony of the New Testament
as our only sure guide to truth through His
Holy Spirit.
Those seventeenth century divines who
framed the standards of the Presbyterian
Churches of Great Britain and America, like
most of the Reformers who preceded them, were
led to reject entirely the idea of an intermediate
state of either weal or woe into which souls pass
at death. This was natural enough as a protest
against the fantastic system of purgatory, but it
led them further, in my opinion, than New
Testament Scripture sanctions. When Our
H 103
What Happens After Death?
Lord assured the penitent thief on the cross :
"This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise/'
He chose a word familiar to the Hebrew teach-
ing of His day, but which we have no right con-
fidently to identify with Heaven, His Father's
House, especially as St. Paul uses the same
word in his account of the man in Christ (almost
certainly himself), "who was caught up into
Paradise and heard unspeakable words."
Further, as all readers of the Revised Version
know, the Greek word Hades, like the corre-
sponding Hebrew term Sheol, is used in the
New Testament as the place of departed souls
generally, whether they are in peace or woe.
For myself I believe that Our Lord went into
Hades between His death and resurrection, and
perhaps preached His Gospel there as the
passage in I. Peter seems to tell us, "to the
spirits in keeping, who once were disobedient."
Our Lord and His Apostles represent the
death of Christians as a "falling asleep." But
that is not inconsistent with the belief that they
awake again immediately into a happy conscious
life. Indeed, some of us have had the joy of
seeing the face of our friends light up with a
glad surprise just before death, and have heard
them addressing by name dear ones who have
already passed behind the veil as if they saw
them.
In Our Lord's parable of Dives and Lazarus,
104
What Happens After Death?
" Abraham's bosom " represents, I think, the
blessed side of the intermediate state, and the
" Hades " where the rich man lay, the abode of
the selfish, God-forgetting man. It is not
possible, according to the parable, for any to
pass from the one side to the other, but that
does not prove that when the day of final judg-
ment comes, there may not be hope for such as
Dives. Yet we must recognise that Our Lord
was wont to speak with sad severity of the future
of those who refuse to believe and follow Him
here and now.
In that intermediate state it seems probable
that there will be some form of embodiment,
sufficient to allow of intercourse, and thus to
facilitate growth in holiness.
One is often called to speak to and pray with
dying persons who have neglected the call of
Christ throughout life, and earnestly ask for
guidance at its close. Occasionally one has
seen what appeared to be true penitence and
eager faith in such persons. Is it not more
likely, and more according to God's methods of
dealing with us in this life, that such new-born
souls should pass at death into a place of training
for Heaven, than into Heaven itself?
Again, I have known many Christian men
and women taken away suddenly from this
world in their early prime, when they had just
entered or were in the very midst of highly
What Happens After Death?
useful service of their fellows — men and women
singularly fitted to commend religion to others
by their example and their words.
Does it not help us to say " Amen " to such
mysterious withdrawals of the very choicest in-
struments of Christian blessing, to think that
they may be needed even more elsewhere, in
co-operating with their Divine Lord in the up-
holding in faith and holiness of those who
passed out of this world in the early stages of
the new life ?
106
THE TRIUMPH OF SELF
By FLORA ANNIE STEEL, the Well-known Novelist
" WHAT value, what interest, can an immortality
have for me," asks Dr. Max Nordau, "in which
I should no longer love what I have loved, no
longer hate what I have hated, no longer re-
member my past life, with all its small and great
adventures, joys, sorrows, ambitions, etc. etc. ? "
What value indeed ? None to one so strictly
limited by human personality as Dr. Nordau
seems to be. But there are other thinkers who,
thank Heaven, have learnt a deeper wisdom ;
others who have spoken of the "self within the
heart, greater than the earth, greater than
Heaven. A self that encircles all, bright, incor-
poreal, scathless, pure, untouched by evil."
And, of a truth, he who beholds all things in
this self, and this self in all things, never turns
away from it. Sorrow, joy, even death are left
far behind.
Mystical as this may sound, to me, at any
rate, it is more satisfactory than Dr. Nordau's
alternatives. Personally, I should be terribly
bored by the memory of mundane loves and
hates through all eternity. Those who cling to
107
What Happens After Death?
this memory seem to forget that love is not
always a "grande passion," and that hate is
often despicable. But if they mean that only
those things that are honest and of good repute
will survive, I am with them, with this difference
— that I hold humanity will disappear altogether,
in so far as it is frail.
Then nothingness is inconceivable. It is one
of the unthinkables of life. So far as our two-
foot rule enables us to judge, nothing that has
been can ever cease to be.
As for the question of an immortal person-
ality, verily there is one for those who recognise
in this life that they are but part of a great whole.
108
WHAT IS IT THAT SURVIVES?
By LADY GROVE
WHEN so many learned divines and dis-
tinguished philosophers have written on the sub-
ject of what happens to the human personality
after death, I can hardly think that my opinion,
even if I had one — which I have not — can be of
great value. What I do think, however, is that
it is futile to inquire into the unknowable, and
also that, as each individual varies during his
lifetime to such an extent as hardly to re-
tain the same individuality manifested at
one time or other of his existence, it may be
worth while to inquire what it is that is supposed
to survive after death of all the complex phases
and characteristics and characters even that go
to make up one single human organism.
109
THE SIMPLEST FAITHS ARE BEST
By LEE DANVERS
To construct is always better than to destroy, to
build up better than to pull down ; therefore, the
simple, unquestioning faith of the Christian in
a life after death must obviously be finer than
the complicated reasoning of the scientist and
the discontented questioning of the unbeliever.
For Christianity constructs a Hereafter, whereas
most of the scientists and all of the unbelievers
do their best to demolish the Christian idea
of a Hereafter without seeking to supply any
substitute.
What happens to us when we die ? Accord-
ing to the Christians we live again ; according
to the unbeliever we do not live again; accord-
ing to the scientist it is impossible that we
should live again, except as part of the im-
personal force which they call "matter." The
Christian used to believe in a life after death
that should consist of becoming an ethereal
creature with wings on one's shoulders and a
harp in one's hands, and eternity was pictured
very largely as an eternity of music. Such
a belief is grotesquely absurd according to the
no
What Happens After Death?
scientist and the unbeliever, but, at least, it is
more attractive than a belief in nothingness or
nothing in particular after death.
The Christian has virtually ceased nowadays
to believe that he will become an angel and spend
the timeless space of the everlasting in singing.
The parsons have listened uneasily to the voice
of science, they have tried to accommodate re-
ligion to the discoveries of men, and they have
ceased to preach a wonderful gospel in a simple
way. But religion has not gained anything by
its adaptation to the scientific thought of the
twentieth century. It seems quite reasonable to
suppose that we shall not become angels when
we die ; indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose
that there never was such a being as an angel,
but, all the same, angels serve a very useful
purpose, if not as facts at least as figures.
A disembodied spirit could not possibly wear
wings on its shoulders, since it would have no
shoulders, but the wings are excellent as a
symbol. A disembodied spirit could not hold a
harp, let alone play on it, since it would have
no hands or fingers, but the celestial harp is
quite a beautiful image. One cannot, in any
practical way, think of eternal music, but, then,
one cannot think, in any practical way, of death
once the earth has been filled in about a grave,
because the rest is mystery. Yet music, because
it stirs our deepest emotions and creates long-
iii
What Happens After Death?
ings which we cannot understand, is a perfect
means of expressing the inexplicable mystery of
eternity.
The wings and the harp and the music are
held nowadays to be the childish figments of
childlike minds, and the ministers of the gospel
have agreed to banish them from their talk of
an after-life out of deference to the fact that
humanity has, so to speak, grown up. But
those things ought not to be banished ; we need
them.
In the face of eternity we are as much chil-
dren to-day as when the world began. We
have grown accustomed ^to the system that
governs the universe, we have given common-
place names to things we do not understand,
and deceived ourselves, with the names, into the
belief that we understand them. But our vaunted
knowledge of the universe is purely a superficial
knowledge. We know that the earth revolves
on its own axis. Do we know why it revolves?
We say that the sun is so many miles from the
earth. Do we know any more than Adam knew
how it came there, and why it stays immovable
in space ? We are children in these matters —
children who have adopted an air of grown-up
wisdom. And because the sun shone through
all the yesterdays we call it reasonable to expect
that it will shine to-morrow, whereas, in truth,
there is no reason in it, but only natural human
112
What Happens After Death?
expectation. Similarly, we dare to "reason"
about death, which, of itself, has never given us
any sort of human expectation.
Reason is a useful thing to apply to the com-
monplace incidents of everyday life, but death
is utterly beyond the domain of reason ; there-
fore, we cannot reason about it. We can only
have faith, or be lacking in faith, concerning
what it conceals. We can speculate concerning
its meaning, or we can decide to leave it out of
our thoughts, but we cannot argue about it and
prove our arguments right before we ourselves
die. No. So far as death is concerned, we are
still children, and therefore we should do better
to cling to childish symbols than to throw them
scornfully away.
Wings are suggestive of a state superior to
the human state ; harps are suggestive of happi-
ness transcending all known forms of human
happiness; music is suggestive of an utterly
different condition of existence to the conditions
of our present existence. In a literal sense they
may seem absurd as heirlooms of death, but in
a symbolic sense they stand for a higher, finer
existence than earthly life; why, then, should we
not cling to them ?
It may be true, as some would have us
believe, that there is no future life for any of
us; that when we die nothing happens except
the thing which is obvious to us all — the decom-
"3
What Happens After Death?
position of our bodies; but, at least, it is no
more "reasonable" to think that death means
nothingness than to think that death means a
spiritual world of infinite grandeur, infinite
happiness, for all who strive to deserve it. And
it is vastly less satisfactory. The doctrine that
when we are dead we are dead for all time is
not a doctrine that helps; on the contrary, it is
one that discourages goodness, encourages law-
lessness ; it is one that favours a pitiful state of
existence in this world because it denudes us of
all incentive to live well.
If everyone believed that death meant utter
annihilation the world would promptly become
a place of unspeakable horror. It is all very
well to argue that many people would live
honestly, soberly, and decently, that they would
do right for the mere sake of doing right; but
we all know well enough that the majority would
do wrong, for the simple reason that it is so very
much easier to do wrong than to do right. Let
us not deceive ourselves. It is the simple faith
of the bulk of mankind in a life after death
of infinite possibilities that prevents the world
from becoming a hell of madness, murder, and
debauchery.
If the scientists and the unbelievers had their
way they would destroy this faith, giving us no
other faith in its stead — and there would be
nothing left to live for. But just as it is im-
114
What Happens After Death?
possible for any rational being to disbelieve in
God, so it is impossible for any sensible being
to disbelieve in a Hereafter. There could not
be a world without a God, let alone a million
worlds, and there could not be death without
a future state. Do you suppose that God would
have put the craving — the need — for a future
life in our souls if there were, in fact, no future
life for us ?
But, the " reasoning " man may argue, how
can there be a future life for us if we know
nothing about it? The only necessary answer
lies, I think, in another question : How could we
be content with this life if we knew that it were
temporarily withholding us from a far more per-
fect life ? We do not know exactly what happens
to us when we die, because it is not good for us
to know ; but in every human soul has been im-
planted a yearning for something after death —
for a light beyond the veil of darkness — and that
yearning is so strong, so universal, that it must
necessarily make even the most matter-of-fact
scientific man pause at times, though it were
idle to expect him to confess such a thing to his
fellow-creatures.
A belief that death is the end of all things
is as impossible as a belief that there is no God.
The atheist declares that there is no God, but
the real truth is that there is no atheist. There
are professed atheists, just as there are pro-
What Happens After Death?
fessed Christians, but there is no genuine atheist.
There is no man or woman on the face of the
earth who does not believe in the existence of
an omnipotent God. Atheism is nothing more
than a wanton, impotent bravado. It is a sheer
impossibility for anyone to live and disbelieve
in an Almighty, no matter what name you may
bestow upon Him.
And so we come back to the wings and the
harps and the music, for these are the symbols
of simple faith, and simple faith is best. Christi-
anity may be assailed, but it has endured
and spread these nineteen hundred years. The
Bible may be full of faults and contradictions,
but it has been the biggest power in the world
for many centuries. The man who believes
in God, in Christ, and in the Bible, may be
able to produce but little evidence in support
of his beliefs satisfactory to men of science and
infidels, but the fact that he is happier than the
man who does not believe in God, or Christ, or
the Bible, is more than sufficient justification
for all who are prepared to accept mysteries as
mysteries and not as myths.
We are children, and as children we must
accept the big but hidden truths of life and
death, believing of them what it is best for us
to believe. The Christian religion teaches that
death is but a dark passageway to a brighter
world. There could not be a more attractive
116
What Happens After Death?
teaching than that ; why, then, should any of us
feel inclined to turn from it to gloomier teach-
ings ? Because reason urges us ?
Decidedly not, for what, after all, is reason
but the working of a mind in a sensible way
when dealing with known things or things
arising out of known circumstances; and how
can it proceed in a sensible way from known
things to unknown things ? Why, not even
death itself appears to be reasonable. Some of
our cleverest men are cut off at the moment of
their existence when they would be of the
greatest possible profit to the world. If reason
cannot explain why this should happen, how
can reason explain what does or does not happen
to these men after they have been cut off ?
The simplest faiths are best, not merely be-
cause they are simple, but because they are
comforting and ennobling. They help, whereas
lack of faith hinders. Far better, surely, to die
confident of life to come than to die in despair.
And far better than all the arguments in favour
of nothingness after death must be the symbols
of the wings and the harps and the music, since
they serve to uplift mankind rather than to crush
mankind down.
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